Category: HIV/AIDS

Bryant Furlow reports:

Since the mid-1990s, genetic fingerprinting of HIV strains has helped convict suspects who transmitted the deadly virus to their victims. A genetic “match” between the viral strain infecting rapist and victim is frequently presented to juries and TV audiences with certitude, as a molecular smoking gun. That seemingly compelling piece of evidence is “increasingly determining convictions by criminal courts,” according to six European virologists in the current issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Mike the mad biologist questions the shady legal implications of that practice:

People are developing ways to sequence the population of HIV viruses, but that creates a whole new set of difficulties: populations of HIV can change rapidly, and, if there's a response to the new patient's immune system, that too can alter frequencies of individual HIV viruses. I don't even know how you definitively in a legal context identify a source with that going on.

No one should diminish the scope of his effort in Africa. As someone who lives with the virus, I’m grateful, surprised, and impressed. Now, let’s refund PEPFAR and end that Jesse Helms travel ban.

We find the ancient liberal smear that limited government conservatism means un-Christian cruelty. There have been arguments over the social Gospel throughout human history. I side with Thompson against the notion of government as a force for spiritual reformation and mandatory charity. What’s objectionable about Gerson’s piece is the notion that Thompson’s version of Christian politics is not a genuine disagreement but a function of "shallow" theology. Different theology, not shallower. Poulos agrees:

Gerson would seem to have us think that a Christian is defective unless he or she supports the use of every tool at the federal government’s disposal to minimize the risk of new terrorists being created.

Larison is tarter:

It is now "isolationist" to oppose foreign aid for disease prevention on a continent where the United States has negligible interests, because apparently our resources are as infinite as the ever-multiplying "interests" that the Gersons of the world discover for us in every problem around the world.  More than that, Gerson tells us, Fred has revealed his lack of "moral seriousness."  For Gerson, governing isn’t a matter of making choices and setting priorities in the American interest, but of unburdening his conscience about suffering on the other side of the world with someone else’s money.  I can understand why Gerson is annoyed–this kind of foreign aid was one of his favourite administration policies–but the reasoning here is beyond laughable.

Some encouraging news from the House – as America struggles to differentiate its HIV policies from Sudan and Saudi Arabia.

Leading Christianist Tony Perkins is happy that Mike Huckabee did not disown his previous hateful statements about people with HIV and homosexuality. And he predicts a backlash if the scrutiny continues:

There is clearly a reverse religious standard being applied to Mike Huckabee, a standard that says there will be no defining religious beliefs. I would hope the other candidates, including the Democrats, would clearly and absolutely denounce this reverse religious test and keep the media from going further down this path. If not, I predict that bible-believing Christians will step over policy differences they have with Mike Huckabee to stand by and support a candidate who is being attacked because he believes, as they do, that their Christian faith should actually impact the way they live. If that happens, the recent meteoric rise of the Huckabee campaign in the polls could look minuscule compared to the tsunami of support that he will get from Christians who are tired of the elites who belittle their beliefs and attempt to rob them of every public reflection of their faith.

A tsunami for Huckabee? We’ll see. But the consequences of Rovism are getting quite dire for the GOP, aren’t they?

The revelations of his previous statements about gay people and people with AIDS are immensely depressing but should hardly be surprising. The views Huckabee held were much more common in 1992 than now – although even then, Huckabee’s callous sentiments were irrational, outside any scientific consensus, ignorant for 1992, and clearly based on animus. I don’t doubt he will distance himself from those early statements about HIV, just as even Jesse Helms did in his later years. But I wonder if Huckabee will be able to distance himself from the statements about gay people as such. Watching every Republican debate this year, you can see how no one ever dares take a position that could be deemed in any way supportive of gay people, understanding of the challenges many gay people face in a sometimes hostile world, let alone supportive of those of us constructing stable relationships.

So this is perhaps a real opportunity for Huckabee, to express what a Christian really should express about the dignity and value of gay people, and about the moral necessity not to demonize or stigmatize those living with HIV or any illness. This culture and society has grown a lot on the issues of homosexuality and HIV in this past decade and a half. This is a chance for Huckabee to show that he has as well.

It is a crisis for his campaign. But I hope he also sees that it is an opportunity for a statement of inclusion, compassion, and regret.

Today, Immigration Equality will hold a press conference to raise awareness of the issue. Here’s a fact sheet on the latest Bush administration proposal that would place new burdens on foreigners with HIV barred formally from entering the US. Here’s a page where you can download a PDF guide to the policy in general. I wrote about it here. It’s insane that in 2007, US policy on HIV should still be following the guidelines that Jesse Helms forged. Even Helms repented of his hostility to people with HIV in the end. But his law remains in place. Wouldn’t it be a fitting legacy for this president’s largely excellent record on HIV and AIDS if he urged Congress to get rid of this provision, which places the US in the same camp as Sudan and Saudi Arabia on treating immigrants and foreign tourists with HIV.

I have a great deal of respect for Laura Bush. She’s been a close-to-flawless First Lady, and a small bastion against bigotry in the White House. She and her husband also deserve kudos for their aggressive approach to the AIDS and HIV epidemic across the world. Yesterday, she wrote:

This summer, in Africa, I saw a schoolyard sign urging an end to stigmatization: "A friend with AIDS is still a friend." World AIDS Day is a time to extend a hand of friendship to the 33 million people — including a million of our fellow Americans — living with HIV.

Agreed. But how can the US support this admirable position while it bars any non-citizen with HIV from even entering the US as a tourist? And while it now proposes to make the burdens of those visitors and tourists with HIV even heavier? The other countries with this policy are Sudan, Iraq, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Are they really America’s role models in countering the stigma of HIV? Even China has now lifted its HIV travel ban. But the Bush administration continues to enforce the Jesse Helms policy. The president’s own advisory council on HIV wants it lifted. So why continue it – and make it even worse?

Mark Dybul is the Bush administration’s Global AIDS Coordinator, and an openly gay man, much liked and respected, not least by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. He is also, alas, required to enforce the policies created by Jesse Helms almost two decades ago to hound, stigmatize and discriminate against anyone with HIV who is not an American and wants to visit, travel or immigrate to the US. Unlike every other civilized country, unlike even China, the US still retains 1980s-era policies that treat tourists and visitors with HIV as if they have malaria, barring them from ever coming in the country, or getting waivers that require them to provide invasive details on their health, be monitored by the government, be subject to deportation, and treated more brutally than anyone with any other medical condition. The other countries with the same policy: Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Is that the company America really wants to keep? Is that part of the AIDS legacy the Bush administration wants to leave? Jesse Helms himself eventually disowned the stigma he once placed on people with HIV; and the Bush administration, to its great credit, has done a great deal to help those with AIDS and HIV in Africa and elsewhere. But that makes retaining the Helms discrimination against visitors and tourists and immigrants with HIV that much more egregious. People living with HIV are not public enemies; we are not carrying the equivalent of malaria. And at a time when the crisis of HIV is growing among African-Americans especially, the government’s maintenance of a bitter stigma against the HIV-positive – declaring them in effect a threat to society and worthy of government surveillance – does immense damage to public health efforts trying to persuade people with HIV to feel less shame and access more care. On the eve of World AIDS Day, the Bush administration has now made things even worse: burdening tourists and visitors with HIV with more scrutiny than the average terror suspect. It’s a grotesque waste of resources, and cruel, irrational public policy.

It’s World AIDS Day tomorrow. How depressing that the US should seek to commemmorate it by ratcheting up persecution of people with HIV. We desperately need a repeal of the Jesse Helms law. In the meantime, there is a way to send the government a comment on the new, more draconian regulations. Details of how to help after the jump.

1) Go to www.regulations.gov

2) Click on All Documents with an Open Public Comment Period

3) In the little box that says "page," type in "39".   [Note: this page number may change as comment periods for other regulations close, if this is not the right page, look for the docket number alphabetically, it should be a page or two in front of or behind this one.]

4) Scroll down to Docket USCBP -2007-0084.  (The dockets are listed alphabetically.)  The subheading is Issuance of a Visa and Authorization for Temporary Admission Into the United States for Certain Nonimmigrant Aliens Infected With HIV.

5) Click on the folder icon in the column all the way on the right to submit comments.

Comments may also be submitted via snailmail to Border Security Regulations Branch, Customs and Border Protection, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. (Mint Annex), Washington, DC 20229 and must include the docket, USCBP -2007-0084.

(Photo: by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty.)